New Year’s Resolution: Let’s Go Mobile

We have been talking about optimizing websites for mobile devices for a long time. We have seen so many statistics and data showing how mobile is being used more and more for online activities including shopping and search. Here, I have some more recent data that will support this conversation.

An eMarketer article gives details about IBM’s analysis of 2014 Cyber Monday online activity. It shows that on Cyber Monday, 41% of online retail traffic in the US came from smart phones and tablets, compared to 30.1% in 2013. This is an increase of more that 36%. It also states that mobile sales grew by 27.6% year over year.

Although, these statistics are focused on a specific day in a year, they actually reflect the overall trend. The role mobile devices play in the online world continuously increases. So, we know that more and more people will be visiting and using our websites using smart phones and tablet computers.

Make sure your website is mobile friendly

This is where the problem begins. All these people viewing our websites with their mobile devices will expect a mobile friendly design. They will need easy to tap links and buttons, easy to identify images and legible text. Otherwise, they will leave and chose to visit a competitor’s site that offers a better user experience. It is hard to get your prospects to your website, so make sure that you make every effort to keep them when they are there.

One of the points I was trying to make in my article last year was to include mobile website optimization in your new year’s resolutions. I still see so many websites that are not mobile friendly, so it looks like we need to consider the same thing this year again.